Suella Braverman says Conservative party will be lucky to have any MPs unless it adopts harder line on immigration and rights

Rishi Sunak will face pressure to adopt hard rightwing policies such as an immigration cap and scrapping European human rights law this week, with Suella Braverman saying he needs to aown and fixa a disastrous set of local election results.

Sunakas allies were on Sunday insisting he wanted to stick to his current plan and that it was working, as plotters against his leadership accepted they did not have the support to challenge him.

About 52,000 people are eligible under the scheme, but a government spokesperson said Kigali would accept athousandsa

Rwanda has admitted it cannot guarantee how many people it will take from the UK under Rishi Sunakas deportation scheme.

The east African country did not give assurances that the estimated 52,000 asylum seekers in the UK who are eligible to be sent to Kigali would be accepted, instead saying it would be athousandsa.

Foreign Press Association decries move under new law based on claim network is a threat to national security

Israeli authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera on Sunday, hours after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news networkas operations in the country.

Critics called the move, which comes as faltering indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue, a adark day for the mediaa and raised new concerns about the attitude to free speech of Benjamin Netanyahuas hardline government.

About 100 people attended Republic rally in Trafalgar Square, with parallel events in Edinburgh and Cardiff

A 15ft dinosaur called aChuck the Rexa was the centrepiece of a rally calling for the abolition of the monarchy ahead of the first anniversary of King Charlesas coronation.

It will be a year since the kingas coronation on Monday, when gun salutes across the capital will commemorate Charlesas reign.

Southern Water says supplies coming back to St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings now that rupture deep in woodland has been fixed

Water is returning to more than 30,000 homes in East Sussex after a main burst three days ago.

Southern Water said that supplies were agradually being restoreda in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings in an update on Sunday afternoon, with about 32,500 properties affected.

Graeme McCormick claims he will gather requisite number of signatures to force contest instead of unopposed coronation

John Swinney could face a leadership contest before he becomes Scottish National party leader after an activist said he expected to win enough nominations to stand.

Graeme McCormick, a well-known party activist who stood to become SNP president in 2023, claimed he would gather the 100 signatures needed from 20 different party branches to mount a challenge for the leadership.

Council says punctuation mark causes problem for geographical databases but locals say their loss is a sign of falling standards

A council has provoked the wrath of residents and linguists alike after announcing it would ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems.

North Yorkshire council is ditching the punctuation point after careful consideration, saying it can affect geographical databases.

Exclusive: Party insiders say departure of Hilary Schan could mark start of end for grassroots leftwing group

Momentumas future is ahanging in the balancea after the leftwing grassroots groupas co-chair resigned and quit Labour to campaign for the Green party and independent candidates.

Hilary Schan said she had begun contemplating her role within Labour in October when councillors first expressed their frustrations over the leadershipas aunwillingness to show value to the humanity of Palestinian livesa.

People around the world have sent the book, with their personal stories, to Edinburgh for an installation to mark its publication 75 years ago

Copies of George Orwellas dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four have been arriving at an artistas studio in Edinburgh for months. Every shape and size, posted from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Peru, Germany, Cape Cod and Sarajevo.

Some are in mint condition, others are dog-eared, tea-stained, heavily annotated or turned into graffitied art works. One is a water-stained first edition; one is a secret love letter from a married woman to her first love; another, a graphic novel version, came from Orwellas son Richard Blair.

Hillas portrayal of Yosser Hughes in 1982 BBC series launched career that included roles in Titanic and JRR Tolkein epic

Bernard Hill, the stage, television and film actor who rose to fame for his unforgettable portrayal of Yosser Hughes, has died at the age of 79.

Hill played the seminal character with the famous agizza joba catchphrase in Alan Bleasdaleas 1982 BBC series Boys from the Blackstuff. It helped launch a stellar career that included playing the captain of the Titanic in James Cameronas 1997 film, and ThA(c)oden, king of Rohan, in Peter Jacksonas Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Parisian bakers have claimed victory over rivals in Italy who created a baguette almost 133 metres long in 2019

For the past five years, bragging rights over the worldas longest baguette have belonged not to the residents of a small village or a city in France, but rather to a clutch of bakers 500 miles away in Como, Italy.

On Sunday a crop of 12 bakers from France set out to rectify this, spending hours kneading, shaping and baking their way back to victory.

Party has gained 768 seats, Labour 545 and the Greens 480, while the Conservatives has lost 1,783

The Lib Dems have added more council seats than any other party over the last parliament, gaining more than 750 in the last five years, largely in the south-west and south of England.

As Ed Daveyas party won more seats than the Conservatives in the local elections last week, the Lib Dems said Tories would be alooking over their shoulder terrifieda as the general election approached.

Keir Starmer says the prime minister has no option but to call a general election

Rishi Sunak was dealt a series of shattering blows last night as Labour won a knife-edge battle to seize the West Midlands mayoralty from the Conservatives and Sadiq Khan trounced his Tory rival in London to secure a third term.

The results, along with decisive victories for Labouras Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram in Liverpool and Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire, left Labour in charge of most of Englandas mayoralties.

Come to Thurrock, where the Tory council went bankrupt, services are depleted and costs are up. People feel victims of a terrible injustice

Late last Monday, I got home from a long day of political reporting to find a political leaflet produced by the Conservative party. It had nothing do with the local elections; where I live, the only contest was the rather underwhelming vote on a new police and crime commissioner. Instead, what it said looked ahead to the general election.

aInflation down, wages up, taxes being cut a letas stick with the plan thatas working,a it read. There were pithy paragraphs about aensuring high-quality education and childcare for all childrena, and abetter transport for our communitya. As with a lot of what we now hear from the ruling party, I read it as a sign that the governmentas pitch to voters had decisively tipped into brazen self-satire. Its implied portrait of everyday life seemed to describe another country. Each promise and boast only highlighted yet another unmentioned failure.

From the new mayoralties through to bellwether councils, find out what happened in your area

• Council results a visual analysis

Worldas smallest army, which is preparing to swear in its latest recruits, has in the past engaged in ferocious battles

With their feathered helmets, ruffled collars and coloured, puffed-sleeve uniforms, the Vatican Swiss Guards are often likened by curious visitors to medieval court jesters. But while they willingly pose for photographs, the watchmen are not there to entertain.

Since the early 16th century, when Swiss mercenaries, revered for their bravery and loyalty, marched to Rome to serve Pope Julius II, the worldas smallest army has been enlisted at the Vatican to protect the pope, his residence and the cityas borders.

UK demand growing for beverages made from fungi, but experts dismiss innovations as ahealth products you donat needa

Sipping mushroom coffee sounds like a weird camping trip anecdote but more Britons are embracing this alternative morning pick-me-up as amushroom maniaa sweeps the high street.

With the food industry eager to cash in on demand for afunctional foodsa that promise extra health benefits, medicinal mushrooms a not the button kind you put in a stew a are turning up in hot drinks, supplements and even beer.

Pro-Palestine protesters hope encampments at universities will contribute to an ainternational student revolta

Students across Britain have said they hope pro-Palestine protests will reach the same scale as those seen on US campuses as they call for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.

Protests have spread across university campuses in Sheffield, Bristol and Leeds, after a crackdown in the US on protests, which led to mass arrests of students and staff.

Known to his friends as the Legend, John Starbrook is living, breathing proof of the power of exercise and enthusiasm. I tried to keep up with him a and barely survived

I like to think of myself as a strong swimmer. Iam not fast, I canat dive or tumble turn, but when I get a lane to myself Iall happily bash out 50 or 60 lengths. Give me a nice big lake, and my idea of heaven is to backstroke into the middle and watch the swallows overhead. I donat worry that Iall cramp up or suddenly forget how to float.

But Iave never fancied water polo. If youave not watched it, itas a sort of cross between swimming, basketball and wrestling, usually played in a pool thatas so deep you have to tread water or drown. There are two teams, two goals, a large ball and an ungodly amount of throwing, catching and flat-out sprinting. Aquatics GB, the governing body, says players can swim two miles in a single game, and need aremarkable staminaa to cope with all the holding and pushing.

Hackney Empire, London
An inspired cast of guests from Nadine Shah to Jim Sclavunos stand in for the late Shane MacGowan in a raucous run-through of the bandas debut album and other highlights

With late frontman Shane MacGowan replaced by a succession of guests, this 40th anniversary show for the Poguesa debut album, Red Roses For Me, could so easily have been a pale imitation, glorified karaoke. And yet, itas utterly triumphant. There are no overwrought speeches during this evening curated by the bandas co-founder Spider Stacy, only a brief dedication to MacGowan and other departed bandmates Darryl Hunt and Philip Chevron, and the Dublinersa Ronnie Drew before The Irish Rover. Instead, they pay more fitting tribute by tapping back into the tornado of energy, passion and poetry that made the Pogues thrilling to begin with.

Within a nanosecond of opener Transmetropolitan, itas pandemonium amid a sell-out crowd who burst instantly into a hundreds-strong mosh, bellowing back every word. The Battle Of Brisbane pushes things even higher; Greenland Whale Fisheries a notch higher than that. By Boys From The County Hell, itas totally feral.

In our age of misinformation, this unsparing study of the many ways in which we can be deceived and how to counter the pernicious effects couldnat be more timely

aWhat is truth, said jesting Pilate a and would not stay for an answer.a Thus philosopher Francis Bacon dramatised the opening of his famous Of Truth essay. Every human being alive, he thought, was prey to the bewitching temptation to disregard truth even to the point of deceiving ourselves, and to believe what it pleased us to believe a certainly disregarding truths put to us by others. In Pilateas view, both Jesus Christ and the high priests urging his crucifixion were no more than partisans of their own particular truths a just like all of us. But, writing more than 400 years ago, Bacon thought that was not good enough. It was crucial, he said, to be honest and have shared truths, and for that he looked to the methodologies being pioneered by science. There were no partisan truths in nature a only immutable laws and facts awaiting discovery.

Today the temptation to believe our own truth to the point of collectively deceiving ourselves, hugely intensified by social media and its accompanying polarisation, has become an everyday talking point a the enemy of democracy and, arguably, civilisation itself. Bacon may have had faith in scientific facts to be the foundations of truth, but alarming proportions of educated people in western democracies do not share his faith even in science, distrusting what it has to say about everything from climate change to vaccination. If a message, especially political or cultural, is uncongenial, retreat to your own truth. Americans approach the 2024 presidential election with mounting foreboding that it will be characterised by industrial-scale misinformation a and there are parallel fears in Britain. Winston Churchill once said a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on a and that was before social media. False stories on X are 70% more likely to be retweeted than true ones a and true stories take six times longer to reach a sample of 1,500 than false ones.

Water detective Dr Leon Barron studies Londonas wastewater, analysing it in all its chemical, narcotic, polluted glory, before and after treatment. Amazingly, he still drinks the stuff from the tap

If you live in London, Dr Leon Barron knows what youare up to. He knows what prescribed drugs youare on a painkillers, antidepressants, antipsychotics or beta blockers a and what illicit ones youare taking for fun. He knows if youave been drinking and when (aFriday and Saturday are the main onesa); perhaps even if youare worried about your dog getting fleas.

Of course, I only mean the collective ayoua, the city. Barron, who leads the Emerging Chemical Contaminants team at Imperial College, has no idea what any individual is taking or doing; he explains that very clearly and carefully. He has a research scientistas precision plus the slight wariness of someone whose research has grabbed headlines, with the inaccuracies and misinterpretations that brings (I wonder what he thought about aPrawn to be wilda, reporting his research on cocaine residue in wild river shrimps.) But heas also infectiously enthusiastic and generous with his time, spending a whole morning taking me round his lab and through his groundbreaking work.

From a hideaway with star-gazing spectacular enough to keep you off your phone to a aburnouta retreat and a reimagined coastguard lookout

Bordering the Consall Nature Park, a nature reserve featuring 740 acres of woodland, heath and moor, is The Tawny, a adeconstructed hotela. This means that instead of a single house with rooms there are a collection of boathouses, huts and treehouses scattered around the woodlands and lakes. At the top of the hill is a modern glass building, the Plumicorn restaurant, and a heated outdoor pool looking out over the gardens. Stargazing sessions and night-time meditation are on offer, while spa treatments can be booked in the thatched cottage onsite.
Huts from APS240 B&B; thetawny.co.uk

Many prisoners are homeless after release but former inmate and probation worker want to fix that

Darryn Frost and Steve Gallant are still dealing with the trauma of tackling a terrorist at Fishmongersa Hall, London Bridge, in 2019.

Gallant, 47, who was on day release from prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder, helped fend off the attacker alongside Frost, 43, a probation worker who had grabbed a 1.5-metre long narwhal tusk as a weapon.

Throughout her life, Danyah Miller developed coping mechanisms to help deal with certain challenges. Would she have thrived if she had known about dyslexia, or would a label have limited her?

Discovering that I have dyslexia, and most probably dyscalculia, later in my life has raised many questions for me, not least whether a childhood diagnosis would have changed the trajectory of my life, both personally and professionally.

Over the years Iad suspected that I might be dyslexic. I also thought that I was making excuses for myself when met with certain challenges. It wasnat until last year that I decided to seek an assessment to confirm either way. I was relieved to read, in the first paragraph of my diagnostic report, that my literacy difficulties are consistent with the specific learning difficulty dyslexia.

Tributes that were removed from public spaces after the end of Chiang Kai-shekas brutal rule in 1975 now crowd a site west of Taipei

The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwanas recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek, known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling the island under brutal martial law.

aThere were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,a Hsieh recalled. aIt was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.a

Tottenham were offered a route towards Champions League qualification but ignored the directions. Ange Postecoglouas team were woeful as they succumbed to a fourth consecutive Premier League defeat that should extinguish their top four hopes as Liverpool rediscovered their verve in JA1/4rgen Kloppas penultimate home game. The scoreline flattered the conquered.

Liverpool cruised towards victory for 72 minutes until Spursa substitute Richarlison and captain Son Heung-min sparked a mini-crisis of confidence among Kloppas team. It soon passed. For the second Sunday in succession Spurs came alive only when staring at a comprehensive pounding but, just like the north London derby, their late flurry fooled no-one. Liverpool were richly deserving of a win delivered by Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, Cody Gakpo and Harvey Elliott.

• Updates from the 6.45pm BST kick-off at Kingsmeadow
• Man City 1-2 Arsenal: Late turnaround shakes up title race
• Want to share your thoughts? Send Sarah an email

Chelsea manager Emma Hayes told Sky: aOf course it is emotional but I have to do my best to make sure I put that at bay until the end of the game because thinking about my life here with these fans and the journey I have had at Kingsmeadow Iad like to think itas not the end, itas merely a goodbye and Iall see you soon.a

The title race run-in is as close as ever and here are the fixtures that are left for Chelsea and Manchester City, the two clubs who can still win the trophy.

Bristol City, 5 May

Tottenham, 15 May

Manchester United, 18 May

Aston Villa, 18 May

The miserable denouement to David Moyesas time at West Ham stands in stark contrast to AMauricio APochettinoas increasing joyfulness on the other side of the capital. European football is on the cards after Chelsea cruised through their second ALondon derby in the space of three days and, for all the doubts hanging over Pochettinoas future, it would surely go down as an act of extraordinary self-sabotage if the Argentinianas bosses make a change this summer.

The main takeaway from this 5-0 win over a supine West Ham is that something is beginning to stir at Stamford Bridge. Instead of Acrumbling after last monthas 5-0 defeat to Arsenal, Chelsea have responded by dominating Aston Villa, Tottenham and West Ham. Far from shrinking, these young Aplayers are starting to grow and mature. Above all, they are starting to Aresemble a proper team and, after a season so full of turbulence, the wisest thing that Chelseaas owners can do now is accept that Pochettino is the man to bring coherence to their APS1bn project.